I think, I’ll stick to write about Jolla in English. Seems like my last post was quite welcome, so why not continuing this.
So.. looks like I had a holiday surprise today, when I was reading Twitter finding, that out of a sudden the latest update was in my Timeline approaching… just grabbed my Phone like a Junky on Turkey and… YAY, update was there.
So… what to do next? Don’t think about anything, just get that thing running!
First thing I found: It looks like Jolla significantly enhanced their update management or server capacities. In any case, the download came floating in like a charm… quick and smooth compared to recent downloads as I feel.
Saapunki, thats the name of the new version, as usual some lake from Finland introduced by a nice landscape picture when downloading. I wonder whether the nice redyellow sky shown in this times picture is sunset or dawn… well, I prefer to think of it as dawn, as this update truly did not promise too much.
So, what did it bring?
Let’s start with some minor stuff…. the design has once again been enhanced. Rounded corners for active covers (OMG!!!! Rounded corners!!!), adjustments on transparency of the same, seemingly it looks more brilliant. I am looking forward to checking tomorrow, whether these improvements bring better readability also in sunlight – which definitely is a weak point, whereas I am not sure whether this is caused by the screen or simply a side effect of the transparent way of UI Jolla has chosen. Generally the guys have adjusted the design slightly by adding fade effects to indicate, that there is more text on tap or other little visual improvements like e.g. Apps which are closed do not simply disappear but „drop down“ and fade away and whenever you enter the lock screen, the first moment it shows the current date, what is then replaced by the mobile operator name.
Email received some major improvement like automatic settings for major providers and, what I consider truly important, an option to NOT load pictures etc. automatically when opening an email. Also the phones call log was modified and shows not only name of caller, but also WHICH number was used in case that the caller has several numbers in the addressbook (it was alway annoying not to see that directly if someone called during the day from his office and you call back out of office hours without even seeing, that you are calling is office). Muting and reply options for a call have also been optimized, which I will for sure try out tomorrow (sorry, I will have to mute some incoming call then).
Next nice little deal: You finally can customize the pulley in the lock screen, allowing you to set shortcuts to three Apps of your choice there. Moreover they included calDAV support, allowing to natively include owncloud or other calDAV supported cloud-calendar, which seems to work smoothly at least with my owncloud calendar. Also Google calendar has now changed to bidirectional sync.
The setting interface has some slight changes, so e.g. the update management moved from the „Product Info“ to a separate menu point. Under the hood, there was an update to bring linux-stable 3.4.87 Kernel, the lock screen now shows an indicator, when internet sharing is activated.
Coming to apps, som things slightly changed… the Browser has some improved handling of HTML5 Video and „real tab browsing“ now, even remembering the scrolling position and zoom active at last view as well as better text field editing. Documents App is gone open source and now free for „hacking“, Android runtime now received somehow it’s own address management so that android apps can refer to contacts from external sources (except facebook) and also the calendar received some updates such as showing event locations.
The biggest deal however, and the biggest boost in usability, is the folder support in the app-drawer. This feature is great for cleaning up the bunch of apps you are collecting. Creating a folder is easy as usual, just drag on drop one app on another and you created a folder. Add more apps by dragging and dropping to that folder. So far, so good. Of course you can rename the folder when tapping on it and then tapping on the folder name which is shown upper right side. In addition, you can also change the folders icon by tapping on that upper left side. Several Sailfisch Icons can be selected to get some distinctive folders. Each folder shows the number of apps in it and the label. What should I say? I simply love that feature as it brings me way closer to organizing and quickly finding my apps.
One slight bad side there is, which however hopefully can be fixed… after having installed the update, it seems like in approx. 3 of 4 cases, the Jolla does not boot properly. The Jolla Logo appears but then, instead of going to the home screen, it simply turns black and you have to press powerbutton again to shut down, indicated by red LED, and restart until it works. I will check and write down when I find a solution. It seems like a few people have the same issue, but really just a few. Let’s see.
All over all, an awesome update for the Jolla. Thanks Sailors.
This was great! I wonder if you would want to publish this on Jolla Users 😉
Thanks. Yay, why not… Should be okay.